The Ghost of Prudence Past
by tuesdayandtuesday
Summary: There are worse ideas than willingly charging into a haunted house in the name of justice. No really, there are worse ideas than that. There have to be. There's just not very many of them. Featuring Lance, Keith, an alien abduction, a rescue mission, and an assortment of all the things that go bump in the night.
1. Keeping Watch

Keith can at least claim that this wasn't planned, which might earn him forgiveness one day. It's his fault that he insisted on chasing the pattern, yes, but everything else? Definitely beyond his control.

It started with their landing, when Allura dropped the Castle of Lions atop a new distress signal. Another planet overrun by Galra, they assumed, but the scanners said otherwise. Just a happy planet of little purple aliens with horns that curled back over their ears and then forwards again, like ribbed fishhooks. Their planet was called Erasmia, they were Erasmians, and more startling than anything, they had not sent a distress signal, despite being the only sentient life on the planet.

Less startling by far, but possibly more unsettling in an insidious, crawl-beneath-the-skin-and-fester, hover-like-a-bad-dream sort of way, was their warning. For all their friendliness, their excitement about hosting new lifeforms, their enthusiasm for alien contact after years of isolation, they had one rule: do not enter the forest. They meant the hulking purple affair just outside their honey-hive hut village, several shades darker than their skin, and hundreds of feet tall. Lush, dense, it was more like a jungle, and the Erasmians said that whoever went in never came out. Maybe long ago, it was a blessed place, but time has not been kind to it; now it cannot be cleansed, and if anyone is fool enough to go inside, it is no one's fault but their own if they should go missing. The forest is for the dead, and no one else.

Keith didn't see the pattern then. The distress signal was the first inkling that something was wrong, and the forest the second, but this made for a coincidence, not a system.

Then an Erasmian went missing the day after Allura's alliance talks began, with a distress signal going up that same morning. The Erasmian leaders denied sending this one, too, and the pattern gnawed at Keith, insistent upon being noticed. He was rusty, though, with months between that moment and his long year spent alone in the desert, searching for the lions at the peak of his investigative skills. So he let the nagging feeling go.

But now it is a pattern, because every other day, an Erasmian vanishes, a distress signal goes up, and the paladins of Voltron have stopped asking if the Erasmians sent it, because the answer is always no. Someone has to be sending it, though, and the missing Erasmians have to be going somewhere, and when these two things keep happening on the same nights, it can't be coincidence.

The only trouble is that everyone notices the signals, but only Keith has actually seen the Erasmians disappear under the light of the twin moons. And he has no proof, which means he needs to get some. This is a task made exponentially harder when, tonight of all nights, another signal is expected, Lance refuses to go to bed.

Lance claims he slept late this morning and now has energy for days, energy enough to take out Zarkon if he "just brought his ugly mug close enough in the next few hours or something," and that means he's haunting the bridge tonight just like Keith does every night.

It's supposed to be Keith's quiet space up here. Sometimes the mice swing by and tug on the laces of his boots, but usually, he's alone with plenty of time to think, and the view when he's perched on his console lets him see the track the missing Erasmians take into the forest, shambling off and vanishing in the blink of an eye. Lance, however, makes a better door than a window, and his constant motion means he's blocking the view of the village every time Keith blinks. By now, the Erasmian could have disappeared, and he would never know, because Lance has been flitting in and out of the way all evening.

"Are you sure you're not tired?" Keith asks again, for what feels like the twelfth time. It's only the second, if he gets really honest with himself, but calling it the twelfth makes it more pressing, and if he doesn't get his evidence tonight, they're going to leave the planet before he can. That's pressing.

"Extra sure," answers Lance, flopping into Keith's console seat and kicking up his feet toward the console proper. They end up on Keith's knees, and he lightly pushes them off when he spots a glob of food goo ground into the treads. That doesn't need to end up on his jeans, even if Coran does have some sort of secret for washing it out. Lance doesn't seem to mind, and just chatters on about all that he could do with this boundless energy, which Keith is beginning to think comes from some kind of space coffee that Coran has been hiding from them for a reason. Half-listening, he considers how bad it would be for Pidge to get her hands on such a thing, and comes to the conclusion that she would either find a way to remotely hack into Zarkon's central command at a distance, ending the fight then and there, or she would craft three new Rovers and a training bot to fight the language sim in her stead before caffeine crashing in front of her laptop in a vent somewhere. Either one is a possibility, really.

Lance prods him suddenly, startling him back to the present. "Earth to Keith. You there?"

"Miles away, actually," he admits. Now that Lance is slouching in the chair, he can actually see the Erasmian village, quiet in the dark save for the ring of watch-fires around each cluster of houses. Lance follows his gaze, frowning, then gives him another nudge. It's a "talk to me" nudge, something Keith is only just starting to get used to. Usually, he shares the bulk of his feelings with Red and lets the rest roll off his back as best he can, but Lance is sharp and only getting sharper. Of all the paladins, he's getting to be the best at catching the subtle shifts in Keith's mood _and_ drawing it out of him. Surprisingly, this is when he's at his quietest. Keith sometimes wonders if he's the one filling the silence at these points only because Lance isn't.

And so he explains the pattern, explains what he's watching for, and then he advises Lance to go to bed. "We probably missed it," he says, "and there's no point in staying up if we did."

"But maybe we didn't miss it, and if we went now, then we really would." Lance's face splits into a grin that doesn't quite reach his eyes; he's sympathetic to trouble in all forms, no matter who's in the thick of it, which is why Keith wishes he would call it a night. Otherwise, Lance will get invested, and when he gets invested, he has a penchant for also getting hurt.

No dice, though. Everything about Lance's demeanor swings around. He unfolds himself from the chair and stands by the window with his arms crossed over his chest. Keith joins him momentarily and jams his thumbs into his pockets. Standing in total silence is nearly worse than trying to see around Lance while he flits around the bridge, if only because it's so far out of the ordinary.

So at first, it's a relief when Lance taps his finger against the glass and says with complete, unshakable confidence, "They're disappearing into the forest right through there." No questions, just a plain statement. Except Keith never got around to explaining exactly where he'd seen the Erasmians vanishing, and when he looks away from his own section of the forest, he sees a limp purple body sliding into the undergrowth, dragged along by its feet.

"We didn't miss it," Lance breathes.

"No shit," Keith replies, swallowing hard. "We've gotta go."


	2. Abduction

This isn't the first time Lance has made a snap decision, and it won't be the last. The second the undergrowth stops shuddering, he and Keith lunge for the doors. When he and Allura returned from alliance talks this afternoon, more than full on the funny little tubers Erasmians considered a delicacy, all suits had been hung up for the night to patiently await another peaceful day, and to dry out. Daytime Erasmia was something of a tropical climate, and sometimes no amount of technology could stand up to the combined forces of humid air and human sweat. Lance isn't exactly over the moon to climb right back in again, but discomfort is small potatoes given the stakes.

"They just…" He turns his palms up helplessly before hurtling into the armory's corridor. "How long have you known this was happening?"

Keith is half a stride behind him. "Day after we got here. Kind of. What, did you not believe me when I told you about it?"

So maybe Lance had been a little skeptical. Ever since the incident with the Blade of Marmora, Keith has been quieter, more easily spooked. He opens up more, too, but it's always tinged with a hint of reluctance because he holds back more as well. It's like he sees ghosts around every corner, and he isn't always right. Seeing the Erasmian dragged into the bushes had proved that this wasn't another of Keith's phantom leads, spinning out into nothing but unease. "It seemed like a stretch," he finally admits, opening the armory door.

Keith throws an arm past him as if to stop him in the doorway, but then he shakes his head and lets it go. "That's why I was waiting for more proof. So you would back me up."

"Yeah, well, you've got your proof and your backup now. Suit up and we can get the others," Lance says, swiping his armor from the wall and his bayard from the shelf.

"No time," Keith answers, already halfway dressed. "Allura wants peace, and running into the forest is the one thing they told us not to do; she won't okay it, and Shiro'll back her up. Pidge'll invent some kind of tracking device in the time it takes to get into the forest, and Hunk's gonna need two thousand words about why it's a good idea on his desk before midnight if he's even gonna consider heading out there. We have to go now." He tucks his helmet under his arm with that and this time, it's Lance sprinting to catch up, juggling his bayard while adjusting his bracers at the same time.

Together they tumble out of one of the service hatches, touching down in a scorched ring of grass. When they lift off again, the quintessence that streams from the rockets will heal the earth below it, but for now, it remains brittle and black. Lance brushes ash from his shins as they step out from beneath the castle, and then they're off again, Keith still leading the way. He skirts the edge of the village, especially the watch-fires, as they go; there's no sense in provoking the Erasmians by getting caught in the act of breaking their only rule. Once, a duo on watch stops their card game to check over their shoulders, but by then, Lance and Keith are already pressed against the back of the nearest home, all but invisible to the aliens beside the fire. They reach the forest without incident after that, and from there, the going only gets tougher.

The place where the Erasmian was dragged away is already beginning to recover. The forest's ground-cover is springy and slick with some kind of oil, and the trampled plants are rising again as if they'd never been stepped on. "See?" Keith says, crouching beside the spot.

Lance steps past him. "No time, remember?" And this just proves it. If the local flora is that resistant to wear and tear, it won't be long before the trail disappears altogether. Maybe they can test the new infrared sensors Pidge installed in everyone's helmets, but maybe not; he's shaken hands with the Erasmians before, and their scaly little fingers are like ice. Besides, Keith won't be able to follow the trail using Pidge's additions. During the testing stage, he didn't last half a moment before he ripped his helmet off, rubbing at his eyes. Another perk of being Galra, one of many Keith seemed to be in the process of discovering: painfully tech-incompatible night vision, built right in.

That night vision suits him here, at least. Before long, Keith has a lock on the trail, even with his visor wide open. Lance isn't sure if he's forgotten about his vision entirely or he's just getting used to being able to see in the dark, but it's still unnerving, the faint golden glimmer that colors his eyes when they catch the edge of the castle lights or the high-beams from the lions or even the sparse forest moonlight. Hunk says that Keith has a tapetum lucidum, the same thing that makes cat eyes shine in the dark. Pidge says that these things are probably surfacing because of the Trials and Keith's knife. Shiro says to give it time, and that Keith is still Keith, even if his teeth are a little sharper sometimes, or if he can suddenly lift twice the weight he should. And Lance believes all of these things. It just takes getting used to, though he's wondering how much he can take. What if Keith turns purple? He isn't sure how he'll handle it then.

Scratch that. Keith will still be Keith. Lance will just make sure to take pictures for later, when it clears up. For proof. And maybe a good laugh.

He comes back to earth when Keith pushes him low into a patch of oily ferns, his jaw set in a grimace as he nods forward. Just ahead, the Erasmian's horns have left a clear trail in the dirt, up until they haven't. The trail dissolves into a series of wild grooves in the earth, turning every which way, and Lance's gut twists.

"A fight?" he whispers.

"Probably. And…" Keith shakes his head at the trail. "And only then. Not before." Meaning that whatever is taking the Erasmians, it's able to do so without a fight, at least for part of the journey. But journey to where?

Fat raindrops suddenly pour out of the sky, clouds flitting over the moons, and the pressure only grows. Lance has spent enough of his life on the beach to know that trails in the earth are no match for water, and if they don't close the gap quickly, the tracks will be lost. "Come on," he says, pulling Keith out of the bushes by his wrist. Part of him is relieved when Keith pulls away to sprint ahead, hacking through tough spots in the undergrowth with his bayard, and the other part of him curls in on itself as if to hide, shrinking away from the storm and the shadows that lurk at his back. The closer they stay, he thinks, the safer they'll be, and it's a relief once they finally stop again, Keith stowing his bayard in a rush and throwing himself to his stomach.

Ahead, Lance can see the faint outline of the Erasmian lying in a clearing, purple horns scuffed and broken, and one ankle in the clutches of something he can't quite see. It seems to be dark in color, for one, and a broken-down iron fence, complete with arrowheads at the top of each stake, breaks up its silhouette, making it unrecognizable.

Then lightning flashes, and Lance hurls himself down beside Keith. The hair on the back of his neck stands straight up, and he knows, he just _knows_ that if he peers over the bush providing them cover, he will be seen.

Together, they hold their breath for an Erasmian minute, which seems similar to an Earth minute but feels instead like a thousand years. Then Lance breaks the silence and says, "So this looks like an alien abduction." He blinks and stares at Keith before splitting into a shaky grin. "Just in reverse. Y'know, with the alien being the abductee."

Keith shrinks into the undergrowth again as another fork of lightning explodes. "The Erasmians live here. The shadow's more alien than they are."

"Go on ahead, take the fun out of it, then." Not that it's fun. Not that it really can be. Lance swallows hard and looks ahead to the place where the Erasmian was, only to find empty grass flanking a pebble path, which in turn leads to a great hulking shape that squats in the darkness like a hungry beast, waiting for fool prey to step into its shadow. The storm parts long enough to illuminate the edges of a tall, crooked spire and a flat roof lined with low ramparts. Weak light glints off broken glass, and Lance is ready to swear on his life that he sees a wrap-around porch that's falling to pieces.

They are in space. Space. Where the architecture absolutely should not evoke the same feeling as the colonial mansion where one's reclusive uncle died, leaving behind a vast fortune and a somewhat deadly poltergeist problem. But that's exactly what it feels like, and Lance knows for certain that he wants nothing to do with it.

He also knows for certain that Keith will walk right up and grab the lion head knockers if someone doesn't stop him, so he says, "We should check through the windows. Get the drop on it." It being the nameless shadow _thing_ that he doesn't want to think about in the context of a haunted house. "And not charge in, guns blazing."

"I'm not the one with a gun," Keith answers, but the nervous flicker in his eyes says he understood perfectly well what Lance meant. He's just too tense to be anything but literal. Hell, Lance'll take it, because at least that makes more sense than the mansion looming before them.

Slowly, carefully, as if a single misstep will send the planet into a violent, superheated end with lots of explosions, Lance creeps toward the front door and peers through one window, while Keith squints through the other. Inside, everything is dark and shapeless, dappled faintly by the rain streaking down the remaining panes of glass decorating each side of the room. Nothing moves, nothing stirs, nothing breathes.

"Looks clear," Keith whispers.

Lance nods and reaches for the rusty doorknob. It whines as he turns it, and then the double doors click open. Like it or not, they have a way in, and so they go, crossing to the center of the foyer with their weapons raised.

Behind them, the door hisses shut.


	3. Click Goes the Lock

Keith lunges for the door the moment he hears the vacuum seal forming, throwing all his weight into it. To his surprise, the double doors lurch in resistance to the seal and then glide open once more, letting in a fresh burst of rain that flies in through the busted porch roof to spray him in the face. He wipes it away with the back of his hand and sighs. "Not locked."

Still, when he shuts the doors again, the hair on the back of his neck lifts at the sound. After spending so much time in space, he thinks he should know what a closing airlock sounds like, yet they're not locked in. They're not trapped. They're not even in an airlock. It goes against everything he expects, and only Lance's hand on his arm breaks him out of it.

"Keith, come on, focus," Lance says, nodding away from the door. "Running out of time, right?"

"Right," he answers. "Yeah, you're right." Shaking his head, he pulls himself together, leaving the door behind. Ahead of him are cracked marble floors and dusty side tables with their drawers busted and lolling out like wooden tongues. An ornate chandelier hovers overhead, crystals spinning slowly in the draft that meanders through, throwing bright flashes across the room with every burst of lightning that sneaks through the boarded windows, which are so tall that even if he stood on Lance's shoulders, Keith would never be able to reach the top. The grandness of the hall only serves to make him feel smaller than ever, and he dreads to imagine what lies in the rooms beyond. There's every chance that they'll be just as ostentatious and absurd.

The twin staircases ahead only make him more certain that he's walking into a very expensive trap. One is collapsed in a splintered heap, its carpet torn and unravelling, but its mirror is intact, curling to a second floor balcony and a set of double doors that perfectly matches the pair nestled below, between the last steps of the stairs. The handles glitter like they might be made of solid gold, and the panels of the doors shine with an unnatural gloss.

Everything else, though, is lost to the darkness of the mansion. All the paintings on the walls are desaturated, and the outlines of the flower vases are only just clear enough to determine that their contents are dead, withering into nothing. Under Keith's feet, the long, narrow carpet that leads to the doors between the stairs is coated with a layer of dust so thick that he cannot clearly see the shapes embroidered underneath.

Creeping forward, he notices a glimmer of water on the floor, probably tracked in from the storm. It leads partway to the stairs before crossing the carpet in a series of droplets, and at the foot of the unbroken staircase, it vanishes without a trace. "Check it out," Keith says, pointing to it.

Lance wrinkles his nose and slides up beside him, fingers curled around his bayard. "Could be a ghost," he says.

"It's not a ghost, but if you're scared, door's back there." He knows Lance won't take the bait, though, and his stomach turns over. On one hand, he wishes Lance would just go back to the castle. There's someone in trouble, which means there's every chance that Lance will hurl himself into danger to keep them out of it, and Keith doesn't know if he can stand to pace in front of a cryopod all day, not again. Especially not when it's his fault Lance is here, working this rescue mission with him.

Then again, whatever brought the Erasmian here isn't friendly, and Keith is immensely grateful for the support. Venturing beyond the safe edges of the marble is daunting, but knowing Lance is there to cover him makes it a thousand times easier.

"That poor guy," Lance mutters, sliding a toe through the nearest patch of water. "We can't leave him in a dump like this, all alone."

Alone. Keith almost laughs, but he's certain that the Erasmian is anything but alone, and that he and Lance are equally unwilling to spare a thought for a hulking figure that trundled the little purple alien through the door. Not yet.

So they waste just a little more time snooping around the foyer, shifting paintings, prying open drawers, lifting up carpets for any sign of secret trap doors. The mansion could be massive, the Erasmian could be anywhere, and the shadow may already know they're here, all very good reasons Lance rattles off against exploring any deeper just yet. But they have to.

"You should take the first floor," Keith finally says, tugging on the hooks of a hatstand in search of hidden levers and getting no results. "I'll take the second."

Lance fumbles the vase of disintegrating flowers he just picked up. "Have you ever watched a horror movie? In your _life_?"

He has, actually. In fact, he's seen several, enough that every nerve in his body is screaming for them to run and leave this place be. "We'll cover more ground," he answers anyway, "and we have our helmets. Call me if you need help."

Without waiting for Lance to argue, he starts up the steps, one foot in front of the other. Then he notices the damp footprints, and takes the stairs two at a time. He has a trail.


	4. Nothing to See Here

Lance is starting to think the foyer isn't so bad. True, everything is swathed in cobwebs and dust, but at least the ceiling is tall and nothing else moves in the dark. There's open space and the barest hint of fresh air, and the steady drum of rain against the windowpanes soothes him. He is all alone, and it's a lot less unsettling than anticipated.

Suddenly, lightning flashes, and being alone isn't so appealing anymore.

"Keith?" he calls, abandoning the oil pastel general whose frame he was peeking beneath. Its eyes seem to track him in a way that no painting should. "Keith, buddy, wait for me. Splitting up is bad news."

No answer. Lance isn't surprised, though, because if anyone is reckless enough to explore this place alone, it's definitely Keith. Truth be told, Lance won't be surprised if he learns that Keith wasn't looking for the Erasmian, but for proof of ghosts. Or Bigfoot. Or Mothman, if Mothman liked to hide in haunted mansions.

Come to think of it, the shadow looked pretty bulky. Too bulky. Bulky enough to be Bigfoot.

Feeling a faint rush of relief that Pidge isn't here to see his conversion to cryptid believer (done in the name of survival, he insists, if only to himself; he's not projecting his interests into Keith, he hasn't believed in these things for years, _no_ , how dare the Pidge in his head make that assumption), Lance rushes after Keith. He launches himself up the stairs with clouds of dust exploding in his wake, and the curved staircase groans with his passing. When he reaches the top, the crystal chandelier shivers.

There are three doorways on the balcony, one at each end and the double doors visible from the main floor. Lance hovers, unsure which way Keith went and wishing he hadn't been nearly beneath the staircase when Keith disappeared. There's no way of telling exactly which door Keith went through. To the left, though, the door lies ajar, and that seems very Keith.

Lance leaves the double doors behind and slips through the open one, hand straying to his bayard. There are no windows in this corridor; just a rumpled rug and doors lining both walls, some missing their handles, one wide open to reveal a barren linen closet. At the end of the hall, a staircase turns sharply to the side before marching upward. Probably the tower, Lance thinks, remembering his brief glimpse of the mansion from the outside, backlit by lightning. That door he'll avoid for now. Nothing good ever happens in towers except princesses, but he's not going to hold his breath for that one.

Tower out of the question, he calls for Keith again, but gets no answer, not even when he turns on his comm. Heavy static fizzles in his ears, and he can't pick up a signal. "Figures," he mutters. But maybe, if Keith isn't in earshot and he left the door open, he went upstairs. There only seems to be one way up or down, and Lance decides that if he investigates this hall while he waits, he'll meet up with Keith again eventually, or he'll be close enough to answer a call for help. That sounds reasonable.

So he investigates, one halting step at a time. The open linen closet houses nothing of interest save for a few wispy cobwebs tucked into the corners, while the door closest to the foyer leads into a musty study. Lance pokes his head inside, skin crawling as his visor whooshes up and away. Apparently, the air here is safe to breathe, but that doesn't make it pleasant. He can practically feel the dust in the room sinking into his pores, loaded down with every bit of dirt a haunted mansion can muster.

Haunted. He really should be a little more careful in his choice of words.

Tucking his helmet under one arm, he approaches the heavy desk and leather chair, wiping a finger through the layer of dust atop the ink blotter. It comes up grimy and grey, and he pulls a face as he wipes it on the spine of the nearest book on the shelf behind him. Then he pulls another face, because the leather binding is dry and cracked with age, papery and clingy to the touch.

"Place'd be nice if it wasn't gross," he mutters. And since the rest of the room looks just as stale, between the patched up rocking chair and the cold, soot-stained fireplace, Lance leaves it be. There's nowhere for the Erasmian to be hidden, not even in the cavity below the desk, and if he stays any longer, he's going to have to look for a shower next, to scrub it all off.

It's not really the dust that bothers him, even if it does make his eyes water a little. A faint allergy is something he can deal with. Instead, it's the sense that the dust is hiding something. It lies over everything, a powdery coat of silence, and everything it touches has been undisturbed for how long? And yet, maybe half an hour ago, _tops_ , he and Keith watched the shadow pull the Erasmian into the mansion before losing sight of it again. A creature that big should leave a trail. The alien it was dragging should leave scores in the dirt and dust. And if Keith went this way, like the open doors suggest, then wouldn't he have turned the room upside down? Where's the evidence of that?

There is none. Either Keith is actually starting to put some value on stealth, or he skipped this room, which doesn't make an ounce of sense. They can't find a missing alien if they don't make a proper search.

"He's starting at the top," Lance tells himself, giving the study door a gentle rattle to be sure it's shut. "Start at the top, work backwards." Still, he can't make himself go up those tower stairs, and instead, he continues exploring down the hall. Two empty children's rooms check out, one with a crumbling bunkbed and the other with an abandoned crib, both with no signs of life. They leave another layer of uneasiness across Lance's shoulders, the unsettling feeling of _should_. There were kids here at one point. A baby, even. This side of the hall should be filled with laughter, maybe some tears, but certainly the sounds of life that come with toy chests and baby rattles should be here.

As soon as Lance thinks it, he wishes he didn't. If he hears even a giggle, he's going to jump out of his skin and shoot the first thing that moves, and for better or for worse, he won't miss.

He puts his back to the wall and forces himself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. One breath at a time, before this mansion suffocates him with his own fear. It helps no one if he's scampering around with a finger on the trigger, a lesson he's always trying to learn. Reflex is one thing, and impulse is another. It's true in flying his lion, true in firing his bayard, true in everything. If Lance acts on reflex, all will be well, and if he caves to the itch in his bones that sings for him to go, go, go, then there will be trouble, something he's got to stop chasing one of these days.

He lets his heart run its course for a few moments longer, waiting for it to steady and then squaring his shoulders against the final hallway door. Just one last room, and then he can call this hallway clear and move on. One room at a time. One breath at a time.

Lance turns the handle on the exhale, and to his surprise, cool storm air curls against his face, carrying the tangy scent of Erasmian rain with it, which tugs on his heartstrings with feather-light fingers. It's so close to home, yet so far, and he has to steady himself for a long breath before taking in the rest of the bedroom.

Before him, the lights are on, three bulbs set into a crooked fan overhead, and the window is open, toying with the curtains as it deposits a cache of flimsy purple leaves on the floor, bounty stolen from the forest. It's a little chilly, but refreshing, and the sense of being plastered with dust begins to ease as Lance leans out the window, catching a brief spray of rain as the wind changes. This? Save for the open window, this is a clean room. It's bright and clear, with a well-made bed to his left and a pristine chest of drawers on the other side, pearl-set handles sparkling softly in the light. Even the vanity is perfect, the mirror positively gleaming, the glass free of streaks.

Lance pauses at the vanity, one hand poised to open the center drawer. A shadowy blotch marks his cheek, and when he moves to thumb it away, the darkness just slides over his finger, steady as ever. When he draws back, though, it disappears, and a glance up to the ceiling fan reveals that one of the bulbs has accumulated a hoard of dead bugs, throwing a tiny, misshapen shadow. Nothing haunting about it, if Lance doesn't count the one bug that still seems to be twitching feebly.

Still, he double-checks the mirror, just to be sure that the light isn't playing tricks on him. The knob on the side creaks as he turns it, angling the glass away from vertical, and a closer look with his helmet off shows him nothing out of place except for the faint beginnings of a beard that he'll remove long before it becomes anything of note. The helmet goes back in place.

As he reaches for the knob to put the mirror straight, though, a flicker of movement catches his eye. The potted plant in the corner shivers, leaves recoiling from the open window. Then, the breeze rolls in, more insistent than before, and the fronds of the plant fly up against the wall. One does not lie flat immediately, instead crinkling it midair and whipping around before it finally makes contact with the wall, as if something stands in its way for the briefest moment.

But it's the middle of the night, Lance tells himself, and he's still nervous, no matter how soothing the breeze may be. The chances that he's seeing things are through the roof, and he just has to settle down, keep his wits about him. So he puts his back to the plant, finishes putting the mirror upright again, and slides the vanity drawer open to find a jumble of cosmetics, carelessly abandoned. Digging through them turns up nothing of note, though, and he shuts the drawer.

To his surprise, the round handle turns in his grasp, loose in its fitting. Lance frowns and twists it the other way, trying to tighten it, but it continues to spin all the way around, and around, and around.

But then it spins without his hand on it.

And then the room spins.

And then he's not standing in front of the vanity anymore.


	5. Bones in the Garden

Keith is beginning to warm up to his night vision. It might not be sharp enough to help him recover the trail he's already lost, but it keeps him from tripping over an upturned rug corner, and he can clearly see which beams overhead look most like they might come crashing down if he so much as breathes in their direction. There are too many with rotted patches to bring him any comfort. How long before this place comes tumbling down to earth? Decades? Days? Seconds?

A flicker of movement catches his eye, pulling him out of his head and back into focus. Candles. Lit candles, twirling in a small chandelier, wavering and throwing soft shadows on the wall.

Candles that most certainly were not lit when he first entered the room.

"Lance?" He waits, and no answer is forthcoming. "This isn't the first floor. Cover that first." Oh, never mind that Lance was right about splitting up being a terrible idea. Keith stands by the fact that they'll cover more ground if they divide and conquer. It's more thorough. More efficient. They'll find the Erasmian faster that way, save him faster, leaved this damned creepy mansion faster.

But a cold hand squeezes itself into a fist around Keith's gut. Divide and conquer would be equally efficient for the shadow to dispose of him and Lance, provided it has support. Which it might. Who's to say this mansion isn't a home or a nest or a hive?

A flash of lightning throws white hot light into the room beyond the door across from Keith, and his heart nearly explodes with the following crack of thunder. "Lance, where are you? Lance!" he asks, this time using the comm system. The lit candles glitter impassively, and he rushes past them into the next room, and through that to a balcony littered with wilted houseplants. Somehow the rain barely touches this side of the mansion, and without it hammering against his helmet, he can clearly hear the static bursting from the comm.

And then, "I'm on th- ir- oor?" Fragmented, but distinctly Lance, saying he's on the first floor. Where he's supposed to be. Keith allows himself a sigh of relief before answering, "I'm on my way."

Judging by the sturdy drain pipe that runs just past the edge of the balcony, he's got a quick route down, too.

He climbs onto the balcony railing and gives the pipe a hard nudge with his foot, stretching almost to his limit to reach it without falling. The rivets rattle in their sockets, but the bands securing the pipe to the wall hold firm all the way to the ground below. It looks like a twenty foot drop, if Keith is being optimistic.

He's not feeling very optimistic.

Still, he makes the leap anyways. Springing from the railing, he kicks his jetpack to life, only for it to splutter in the oily rain, bringing him inches short of the pipe, then putting him at gravity's mercy. Flinging out his hands, he barely catches it and slides partway down, the rain-slick metal almost causing him to slip and fall when he pushes away on the dismount. He sticks the landing, though, planting his feet firmly in heavy soil on the verge of becoming mud, throwing his arms out to the sides for balance. His heart stutters as he looks up at the fall he almost took.

But with the balcony overhead, the garden he's in is shielded from the worst of the rain, which is nice enough for him, but a shame for the flowers. A patch of ivy claws at the walls, withered flowers tangled between strands, and a clump of flowers droops into the dirt, yellowed with age and a lack of care. Keith crouches among the flowers, lifting one of the buds upright only for it to slide from his fingers to lie dead in the dirt. They probably haven't been watered or trimmed by hand for years, and the neglect is claiming them.

Of course, there could be another reason why the flowers are dying. As he stands, Keith catches a hint of white against the wall, flecked with soil. He scuffs his boot over it, and then reaches down to dig it out. Ultimately, a bone surfaces, no longer than his forearm and eerily akin to a human femur, and when he sifts through the dirt, ball sockets and fragile ribs begin to take shape. All are gnawed clean, peppered with needle-sharp bite marks, and some are cracked, hollow inside.

Bile rises in his throat and he lets the femur fall from his hand as he stumbles back. The Erasmian only went missing an hour ago at most, so this can't possibly be him. It's all too clean, too worn. But the size of the bones makes Keith think the full skeleton would take the short, stocky shape of the planet's residents, and the idea makes him sick to his stomach. It shouldn't, given what he's seen stemming from Zarkon's cruelty. He's witnessed slavery, firefights, even torture for the fun of it, and those only made him more devoted to Voltron. Those acts made him certain he was walking the just path, because he wanted nothing more than to stop them.

But the bones here can roll in his palm with room to spare, and Voltron can't save them now. They're too small, picked clean by an enemy Keith still can't recognize, and the sense that he's a thousand miles out of his league, deep in the dark, settles heavy over his shoulders.

Dwelling on it won't help. Turning his back on the bones, Keith goes to the faucet in the wall and unscrews the faded hose, meaning to splash his face with cool water before moving on. The tap drips with oil, though, so he abandons it and ignores the dryness creeping through his mouth. "Find some water," he tells himself, "find the Erasmian, find Lance." Water first would be ideal, but any order would settle his nerves. For good measure, he sends a message to Lance, telling him only that he's also on the first floor, and that whatever they're dealing with has _very_ sharp teeth. Nothing else, though, or Keith's heart might crawl up his throat and leap out his mouth.

He waits only a moment in the hope that Lance will reply, but the static is endless, and standing still accomplishes nothing. Kicking in the nearby door and discovering a sparse kitchen is much more proactive, however, and the sink inside even has running water that passes the safety scan in his helmet. Visor down, he splashes some over his face and then braces himself against the cracked linoleum counter to plan his next move.

There's no need to go back to the garden and the stone walls around it. He can't confront the buried bones again. So, forward it is, through the one door at the other side of the room, and still forward from there. But forward after who? He can keep searching for the Erasmian, but he may only find Lance in passing. If he's lucky. Being lucky, though, isn't as appealing as being dead certain that Lance is alright, and if Keith has to face any other skeletons, he knows he doesn't want to do it alone. Even after the cold water, his skin is crawling from his discovery in the garden, and the sense that something isn't right envelops him like a fog, clouding his judgment. He should move on, do what he planned to do long before Lance ever joined him on the bridge, but even if the Erasmian needs help, he needs Lance. He needs Lance to see this through, and that's all there is to it.

As he makes his way out of the kitchen, he considers checking the ancient refrigerator. It looks like something out the 1970s, with its dirty plastic finish and metal latch handles, and the freezer rumbles as the cooling fans roar to life. Maybe if all the shelving was removed, an Erasmian might fit inside, like leftovers.

Leftovers. God, how can he think like that?

Suddenly, Keith does not want to look inside. He runs a bioscan instead, praying it'll show him as the only thing still alive in this room, giving him an excuse to leave the fridge alone. To his surprise, that's exactly what the scan gives him. He is the only sign of life in the kitchen. Hell, he's the only sign of life on the first floor, it seems. Dismay washes over him; the scan should have turned up Lance's location as well, but its range seems confined to a radius of ten feet around Keith, give or take. Whatever has been interfering with the comms is probably limiting the bioscan as well.

The best solution is to take it slow and scan ten-foot circles of the mansion at a time. "Damn it," Keith says. The fridge fan whines to a halt, commiserating, but it doesn't have any better ideas to offer.

So forward again he goes, this time in ten-foot spurts, and it's _agonizing_. The bioscan labors to search the area every time he turns it on, and even worse, Keith is continually the only green blip of life in his visor. There is no shadow creature behind him, a small relief, but there is no Lance, no Erasmian before him, either. Keith makes it all the way through the kitchen, a lavish dining room, part of the hallway, and a portion of what looks like a ballroom before this changes.

Midway through the ballroom, he pauses. The bioscan pings in his ear, and a half-shaded dot appears in his visor, barely there. It flickers in and out as Keith follows it to a door in the far wall, but in the time it takes him to twist the knob and discover the door is locked, all signs of life are gone, leaving him alone again.

Could be a ghost, he thinks. When she put them in, Pidge said the scanners might be able to pick up residual energy until she had more time to perfect them, and Keith hasn't returned to her for upgrades yet.

If it isn't a ghost, though, it's something alive, and it's something that can hide from a bioscan, which Lance and the Erasmian can't do even if they tried.

He doesn't stay to find out what might have that ability. Against something that can vanish or fake its own death, something that can fool even Pidge's tech, he stands no chance alone. Fleeing the ballroom, he's reminded uncomfortably of his last encounter with a Galra druid, the one that hurled him around the quintessence plant without so much as breaking a sweat. It's possible the Galra have agents already on Erasmia, agents who need to kidnap the locals for _something_. Whatever it is, Keith isn't sure he wants to know yet, not when he feels so vulnerable. He has to know what he's facing before he can begin to fight it.

Hurrying back into the hall, he gives up on the bioscan. Stopping every ten feet leaves him exposed as he waits for results, makes him more paranoid than he needs to be. Besides, doesn't he have night vision and two perfectly good eyes? He can get by with those.

Too bad he can't see through walls, though. He figures it might save him some time after he opens doors to a crumbling staircase, a piano with snapped wires spilling out of its belly, and a bathroom even Pidge, small as she is, would be hard-pressed to find elbow room in. The courtyard behind the mansion is disappointing, too, dying in the rain as it is.

But then the bioscan pings again, and crosshairs appear over the well sitting some fifteen feet in front of Keith. Outside, he has a better range, even if it still isn't great, and as he sprints closer, the crosshairs readjust, sinking deeper into the well until they alight on the figure inside.

Lance clutches his ankle, his face ashy in the next lightning flash. His helmet is missing, and even from the top of the well, Keith can see his teeth chattering with the cold. "Lance!" he calls down, leaning as far over the well's lip as he can. "Hey, I'm gonna get you out. Just wait a minute, okay?"

It's never a good sign when Lance doesn't have anything to say. He nods, but barely takes his eyes off his ankle, and Keith falters. His jetpack probably can't lift them both out of the well, especially if he has to fight the pouring rain, and Lance can't stand to activate his own. That rules out the hard way, too, the possibility of Keith leaping down and the both of them climbing out with their arms locked and their backs pressed together. Once, they did that up hundreds of feet of elevator shaft. Now, they're thwarted by a bad ankle and a twenty-foot well.

Then Keith hits his head on the bucket pulley, and a plan falls into place. The bucket is plenty big enough to plant at least one foot in, and the rope looks almost brand new, so he starts lowering it down, one painfully slow turn of the pulley crank at a time. To Keith's relief, it touches down right beside Lance, and he eases himself into it as gingerly as he can, no prompting necessary. The rope stretches taut with his weight, but it lasts long enough for Keith to haul Lance to the top and lift him to solid ground, at which point he collapses again, this time with a long hiss through clenched teeth. His eyes are glazed, like his ankle hurts worse than he's letting on, and up close, he even seems a little blue from the cold.

Keith isn't sure how much he can do about Lance's ankle, but he can at least help with the chilly air. "Take this," he says, pulling off his helmet and sliding it onto Lance's head. The visor seals, and then it fogs temporarily as Lance's suit performs an emergency bout of climate control.

"Thanks," Lance says thinly as the fog clears, looking only a little less peaky than before. Keith winces at his grimace. They definitely need to do something about Lance's ankle, and soon. With a twinge of guilt, Keith imagines that abandoning their mission and returning to the Castle's cryopods would be best for them, albeit not for the Erasmian.

"What happened?" he asks, trying not to think of the bones in the garden, and how many more there might be if they leave.

Lance shrugs. "Fell in. Pushed in, really. Didn't know it was behind me, didn't have time to make a better landing." He pauses and then adds, "Lucky I didn't break my neck."

Lucky it didn't eat you, Keith thinks, reminded of the shadow beast. But maybe it thought Lance was already dead. Or maybe it pushed him in so it could starve him to death. Or, or, or… Keith shakes his head and runs another bioscan, just to be safe. It's only him and Lance by the well, though, and nothing else. Perfectly safe unless there's a rogue lightning strike, and the chances of that don't scare Keith at all, they're so slim.

Maybe the mansion exists in a pocket of increased probability, though, because no sooner does Keith consider the impossible odds than a blinding flash explodes overhead. Stone rains down from the balcony above, shattered by the blast, and Keith's blood runs cold. It runs even colder when Lance points and asks, "Is there something up there?"

Sure enough, there is. It's a slender shadow, barely visible from the ground, and it staggers out of sight, clutching its head.

"We have to catch it," Lance growls, trying to get to his feet, but Keith is faster, gently forcing him back down.

"It's probably hurt," he hears himself say, regretting every word that follows. "Put your back to a wall and stay down. I'm gonna go find it, and then I'll come back."

"But–"

"You can't even stand, let alone walk. Just wait here and keep yourself safe. Okay?"

The hard set of Lance's mouth says that he's going to refuse, but eventually he relents, scooting over to the stone wall of the courtyard with Keith's help. "Hurry back," he says, reaching for Keith's shoulder until he thinks better of it and holds his ankle again, tears in his eyes.

"Hurrying," Keith answers with his heart in his throat, already sprinting for the ruined stairs he has to climb with his jetpack so useless in this rain. They should lead to the second floor, or maybe even higher from there, and if he hurries up, he can get the drop on the figure on the balcony.

But only if he hurries.


	6. Out of Place

Lance is used to plans blowing up in his face, but it would be nice if actual explosions stop going off while he's still in range. At least this one wasn't powerful enough to almost kill him, but the aftermath is messy, not to mention painful. Blinking stars and smoke out of his eyes, he lies on the stone floor and coughs until the air filters in his helmet whir to life.

As his surroundings clear, Lance sits upright and groans. Only a couple minutes ago, he was fiddling with the vanity drawer. Then the room spun, dumping him on this third floor balcony in the pouring rain. Stone wreckage hems him in, and the lanterns along the balcony railing have all blown out with the blast, leaving empty wrought-iron shells behind.

The worst damage lies ahead of him. There was a statue there, a grotesque winged lion. Lance remembers sending his new location to Keith with no response, then thumping the stone beast across the chest with his fist, demanding in a panic to be sent back. That was when it exploded, and only its fractured base and the twin statue at the other end of the balcony attest to its existence.

With a groan, he hauls himself to his feet, hand to the back of his head. The howling storm makes him feel like a sitting duck, and the creaking of his jets doesn't give him any comfort, either. Landing squarely on top of them might have only fractured the outer casing, but it also might have damaged all the bits and bobs inside, and he's not sure he wants to find out how badly it's busted while he's still wearing it. He needs to get inside to take a breather and assess the damage, even if only for a few minutes.

He hesitates, though. Up here, if the ringing in his ears doesn't have him fooled, the static on the comms isn't so bad anymore. "Keith, come in," he says. Might as well retry his last transmission. "I'm on the third floor, on a balcony. Keith?"

Of course Keith fails to answer. Of course. Nothing about this mansion offers Lance any hope otherwise, and as he picks his way to the door closest to the tower, in the hopes that they'll connect, he makes a mental note to ask Pidge about upgrading the comm systems. "Doesn't even work in the a storm," he grumbles as he trudges inside. "It's advanced alien tech, not satellite TV."

A few steps down the hall, though, he quiets and keeps his bayard close. The shadows are long down this corridor, lit only by a tiny circular window at the far end. Every step echoes, even with the moth-eaten rug to soften his footfalls, and an eerie hush settles over the length of it each time he pauses, defeating even the subtle ringing persistently in his ears.

It wouldn't be so bad if Keith were there, he thinks. He would feel much safer combing the mansion together instead of guessing where the other might be. Not to mention he keeps returning to his last glance in the vanity mirror before the room spun out of sight completely. There was a shadow on the wall, not his own, and certainly not from the dead bugs in the ceiling light. It only appeared as Lance vanished, like it was as surprised as he was to see him go so suddenly.

Lance can't be sure it's the same shadow he and Keith are hunting, but conviction floods his bones anyway. Whatever the creature is, it knows that its home has been invaded. It knows who invaded it.

More than ever, Lance wishes they had never split up.

"Too late for that," he mumbles. And just like before, he sets himself to a plan in the hopes that maybe Keith did get his location, that maybe he will come blitzing around the corner if Lance keeps busy in one place for just long enough. The hallway checks out quickly without any linen closets to rummage through, and so does the room full of old-timey phones with all their wires frayed to pieces. Thankfully, none of them ring.

The clock room is a different story, but he can't bring himself to go inside. With the help of his visor, he can see most of the clocks around the room, and none of their hands are moving. There is, however, a steady ticking. Lance is not fool enough to enter a clock room that ticks when all the clocks are dead. Instead, he slams the door shut and steals a chair from the table at the edge of the phone room, jamming the back of it beneath the door handle. If anyone else wants to go in, that's their business, but if anything is inside, it's going to have to take some time getting out. Unless it's super strong.

Lance goes back to the hallway, haunted by that particular thought, and enters the only other door.

He was hoping for a connection to the tower, even a rickety board bridge, but he gets suits of armor and dusty cedar trunks instead. Rusted gauntlets cross themselves over rapiers, all stuck to placards mounted on the wall, and helmet plumes wither, laden down with dust. This isn't Lance's type of armory, with no guns or bows in sight, but he can appreciate it nonetheless. It takes time to amass a collection like this, and though it's fallen into disrepair, it must have been well cared for at some point, or else it would have completely turned to rust long ago.

He knows it won't work, but he sends a message out anyway. "Hey, Keith. You should check out this armory up here. Swords, man. So many of them." Popping open one of the cedar trunks, he finds even more blades swathed in velvet, shiny as the day they were forged. "Knives, too. There's one here that could give your Galra poker a run for its money. Comes up to my elbow!"

In hindsight, the fact that Keith doesn't answer probably saves Lance's life. The armory is dead silent but for the static crackling in Lance's ear, and then he hears it: the faint groan of metal before it gives way. It comes from just over his right shoulder, almost unobtrusive enough to go unnoticed.

He notices.

He rolls hard to his left, and a morning star splinters the floor where he was crouched only a heartbeat before.

The armory is alive now. As a unit, the suits of armor straighten their backs and heft their weapons. Their helmets swivel, detached from their shoulders, and as Lance's first attacker pries up its weapon from the floor, a second one aims to cleave his head clear away with a brutal horizontal axe swing. He plasters himself to the floor in time and his bayard is already transforming, settling nicely into his hand.

One, two, three shots later and the would-be axe murderer stands smoking from its helmet. A single red eye glows inside, flickering weakly as it fixes on Lance. He doesn't have the time to fix on it back, though, because the rest of the armory is still gunning for him with their rusty weapons and clanking armor.

It's almost familiar, the steps he takes to thread between them. Bob, weave, duck as two swords clash in pursuit of his neck. He's never fought a ghost knight before, but it feels like he has. It feels like he's done it a hundred times over, even down to the number of shots it takes to finally, finally put one suit out of commission for good. He guesses that it takes almost fifteen bullets to drop it, maybe more, and though his bayard has ammunition to spare, he's running out of room. The suits climb over their fallen ally with more grace than expected from giant hunks of metal, and only a few more inches will see Lance's back against the wall. They're closing in to form a semicircle of pointy ends that Lance prefers not to be skewered with.

He bolts.

One finger on the trigger, other hand frantically working the knob, he gets the door open just wide enough to squeeze through. An axe splits through the wooden panels, hurling splinters everywhere, but by then Lance is already sprinting down the hall and out onto the balcony.

If they can't catch him, they can't kill him. It's a very simple concept, useful in all sorts of situations, but especially when outnumbered. He's used it in the Garrison more than once, and who knows how many times he's done it as a paladin of Voltron? He's a defender of the universe, but he's also got legs a mile long and a good sense of when to get the hell out, a sense inadvertently cultivated by Hunk over the years. Perhaps that's why they do so well in Allura and Coran's pair training sessions. They'll fight, sure, but they know better than to stand their ground against impossible odds.

Lance almost crashes into the door on the other side of the balcony, the one that will hopefully lead him downstairs. This feels like the love-child of the Castle combat sims and a horror movie, and the more he thinks about it, the more he feels like it takes after the Castle. Things with glowing red eyes are trying to kill him, he's been teleported halfway across the mansion, and it's definitely haunted. It has to be. At least he can't be shot out of an airlock here, though.

Heart doing laps in his chest, Lance flings himself at the first door he sees, only to find it locked tight. The second door, though, is mercifully open. Even better, it has another door close to the first, and he barely spares a grimace for the fur rugs on the floor, bear jaws gaping open, before he's through the door and on the landing for a set of stairs. Downward stairs.

He punches the air in short relief before grabbing the banister and bounding clear over it. With the adrenaline beginning to cloud his reflexes instead of enhancing them, he almost rolls his ankle, but avoids tragedy and stumbles down yet another hall lined with doors.

Anybody with a brain would check the first door he passes, so he elects not to get cornered there. The second door is out, too, since it's all boarded up. Even if he had the time to get it open, there would be no disguising his entry from anything that knows the house. He does, though, fire a single shot through the door's center when he hears metallic footsteps marching overhead. Maybe the suits will waste their time on the assumption that he blew through the boards to hide.

Ultimately, Lance throws himself through the third door and slams the lock home behind him. Across the checkered tile floor is a circle of lit candlesticks beneath an unlit chandelier, and still beyond that, gold glimmers in the firelight, revealing another door. Careful not to disturb anything, on the off chance that such caution will throw the knights off his trail, make them believe he was never here, he dashes through, only to find himself face to face with the stars.

It takes his breath away. Thousands of stars shimmer weakly around him, only just casting enough light to reveal a single telescope and matching stool, despite the small size of the room. Lance can reach wall to wall if he stretches far enough, and dimly he realizes that this makes a perfect bottleneck for the knights; it's not possible for more than one to enter at a time, and Lance could easily perch on the stool with the end of his bayard just waiting to greet them.

But he doesn't sit. Instead, he barely locks the door before reaching up to twirl starlight between his fingers. There are thousands of stars to choose from, little will-o-wisps begging him to forget his troubles and stay. Some shine brilliant blue, while others emit a pulsing red glow, and whole chains of stars blink in unison as he approaches, singing their siren songs.

Out of habit from long nights on the Castle's bridge, Lance searches for the brightest one. It feels like years since he's seen _his_ North Star, and hardly to his surprise, it isn't there. The title of brightest star is instead shared by a pair of yellow suns, unremarkable save for their intensity. They drift slowly over his head, trickling down his arm as he reaches up to greet them, rolling all the way down to his palm. They lie dormant there until he flexes his hand.

Then the known universe explodes.

Well, it looks like it does. Suddenly Lance is viewing the stars at a magnification with far too many zeros. The roiling flares on their surfaces appear in great detail, and he can even see directly into a sunspot on one star. Most startling of all, though, is the floor. Once dark tile, it now thrives with ghostly white markings that Lance's helmet can't translate. However, he recognizes the universal format for coordinates almost directly beneath his feet, a flurry of numbers, dashes, and apostrophes.

He knows where he is.


	7. Knightmare

To hell with whoever made these doors. To hell with them, no questions asked. Keith would swear on his life that he's been trying to get through to the second floor for ten minutes now. When he discovered the door immediately off the stairs was locked, he tried to kick it in. When that didn't work, he slashed at it with his bayard. And when that didn't work, he set the blade against the hinges and allowed it to flare bright with fire. It's a new trick, recently imparted from Red and meant to make his swordwork all the more intimidating, but apparently it can't even melt through some old mansion hinges without taking a lifetime and then some.

He's through the first hinge, but the second is stubborn, and his bayard can't smoke and splutter forever. At this rate, the creature from the balcony is probably on the other side of the door having a good laugh at his expense, if only because it has all the time in the world to do so. Keith vividly imagines flipping it the bird as he saws at the hinge even harder.

He fails to imagine, though, that the door might swing inward with a hearty groan, revealing red-eyed knights on the other side.

"Intruder," says the leader of the pack.

"Shit," says Keith.

He's flying down the stairs even as a broadsword cleaves the carpet where he was standing. Suits of armor rattle and crash after him in a horde, brandishing their weapons. They hunt him relentlessly, only a hair slower than he is. Kicking it up to a sprint barely buys him enough time to reach the ballroom and lunge inside before they're on him again in a heedless melee, hacking at him without concern for their fellows. Two take themselves out of the fight this way, their weapons snagging on one another's armor, but another five remain.

At least the ballroom affords Keith some space. The narrow hallways aren't kind to his bayard, but the clear tile dance floor allows him plenty of room to maneuver. No matter how quickly the suits move (and they move very quickly indeed), they can't seem to surround him completely. As he slashes at the chinks in their armor, Keith is painfully conscious of the need for an immediate exit at any time. He might be good, but if the knights hem him in, it's game over. He can't defend himself in five directions at once.

He focuses on defeating them one at a time. The only knight with a morning star is the easiest to outdo; Keith drives his bayard down through its visor in a shower of sparks, and it stumbles into the wall as its eye goes dark. The others, though, present a greater challenge. As if the loss of one knight grants greater fervor to the rest, they rush Keith with axes and broadswords, dealing one-handed blows that no man could ever hope to deliver. They spin their weapons in their palms with so much grace that it almost seems like a performance, and their steps are carefully measured, precisely placed. Meanwhile, Keith cringes at the sweat dripping down his neck, into the back of his armor. To be only armor at a time like this, not flesh and blood, would be nice.

He is human, though (mostly), and while that makes him the weaker opponent, it also makes him smarter. Ducking beneath a double-bladed axe, he throws himself toward the locked door he discovered earlier. The knights whirl after him with a new gleam in their eyes, a spark that would be considered hunger in anything alive, raising their weapons high.

The axes swing down.

The swords surge forward.

And Keith drops to the floor, slicing through ankles and knees as he shoots out the other side from between their legs. He saves the ones whose weapons are lodged in the door for after the fourth, which he skewers below the breastplate as it rounds on him. It staggers until its eye loses its light, and by then, Keith has made short work of the others. Their heads cleave neatly from their necks, a feat made that much easier by their refusal to save themselves by abandoning their weapons to the wreckage of the door. Sparks fly as their heads bounce across the tile floor, and one by one, they die, leaving Keith all alone again.

His knees wobble. It's been too long since he's been forced to fight like this, trapped at close quarters without anyone to cover his back. Leaning on his bayard, he eases himself down the wall and stops just to breathe. To think.

An empty helmet stares back at him just beyond his feet, and he stretches to pull it forward with his foot, then rolls it between his hands once it's in reach. To his surprise, it's almost feather-light despite the thick metal plating, so weightless he could probably hurl it across the room. Even more surprising, though, is the inside. When Keith turns the helmet upside-down, the inner plating shines with all manner of circuitry. There's copper, gold, flashes of green and silver and blue, all swirled together in a sea of circuits. A bundle of wires trickles down from the helmet's crown, and stops at the nape of the neck, neatly severed.

The circuitry makes Keith's skin crawl. It's too mechanical for a mansion so decrepit, too advanced for a planet populated by aliens three feet high, aliens that live in huts that look like hives, aliens that appear to have eschewed advanced tech every step of the way, just because they can. Nothing about the helmet belongs here.

He sets it aside gingerly, as if it might return to life and attack him even without its body. The longer he looks at the fallen suits of armor, the more they trouble him. Where did they learn to fight like that when their weapons weigh twice as much as any Erasmian? Where did they learn to fight at all on a planet that claims to have known peace for millennia?

Looking to the weapons still embedded in the door, Keith only finds more questions. Why would swordsmen bury their weapons so deep? Why jab instead of slash? It wasn't as if they carried spears, yet they still wielded them that way, and with more than a fair degree of skill to boot.

And they called him an intruder. Like they knew the mansion, knew what belonged and what did not. All things considered, they were beginning to look to Keith like one of the universe's most dangerous security systems.

All that for a haunted house. What did ghosts need a security system for anyway?

 _To protect their valuboos_ , says a voice in Keith's head that sounds suspiciously like Hunk. Keith allows himself a little grin, a very tiny grin, because Hunk would probably appreciate a pun that bad. He can tell Hunk later, though. For now, he still has a mission. Two missions, truthfully: find the Erasmian, and return to Lance.

Heaving himself to his feet, Keith spares a last glance at the broken door. It had been locked for a reason, and probably an important one. But the mansion might have more knights prowling its halls, and Lance is still injured. If it comes down to a fight, Keith fears that the odds do not hold Lance in their favor.

The door can wait. "Lance, there are suits of armor trying to kill us," he says. The emergency comm in the collar of his armor fizzles with static. "Keep your head down until I get there."

Every second without a response pumps ice into his veins. Nevertheless, he leaves the ballroom behind and slinks toward the courtyard, bayard preceding him around each corner, just in case. No more knights ambush him, though, and he makes it safely outside without being forced into another fight.

The rain refuses to clear. It's marginally better than before, drizzling instead of pouring, but it certainly isn't dry. By now, the grass actually squelches underfoot, the mud clings to his boots, and the steadiness of the rain keeps him from seeing more than a few feet ahead, night vision or not. It seeps into his armor, cold and clammy, and he knows he can't stay out long unless he's willing to court pneumonia or hypothermia, or whatever other diseases might fester in the Erasmian rain.

Holding his dripping hair out of his eyes, he picks his way toward the well, pausing now and again to call for Lance, to no avail. The comm buzzes more weakly than ever, barely audible in the storm, and there is no answer from the courtyard, either.

Soon enough, Keith realizes that there's no answer because there's no Lance. His heart latches onto his ribs and gives them a vicious shake, stuttering and stamping as he fumbles to start a bioscan from the device in his gauntlet. He keeps trying the comm, too, but the interference from the storm and god only knows what else means that he hears nothing but static and rain, and the bioscan is unable to catch even the tiniest blip of life. Not because Lance is dead, Keith tells himself. It just isn't working, and that's that.

Why did he ever split up? Lance told him it was a bad idea, and now that it's done and over with, he can see that, but what made him run off alone in the first place? They weren't covering more ground or being more efficient. He waltzed off to the second floor and left Lance to fend for himself, and now they're separated in a goddamn haunted space mansion.

Which Keith has to search the hard way. He doesn't even have an agreed meeting point to start with, but there's no other way. The comms and bioscans aren't working, which means he needs to open every door in this mansion if it kills him, which it very well might.

Stepping under the scant shelter provided by a broken down shed, Keith wrings out his hair as best he can before giving his jetpack a gentle test. It flares to life without a hitch, and the top of his head grazes the ceiling before he drops again. "Perfect," he mutters, looking back at the mansion.

There are a lot of windows. Enough windows to maybe, just maybe, justify a single loop around the house by jetpack; the rain is lighter than before. If he's quick, he can get a good look in each one before he ends up soaked through, and then he can duck back inside, hopefully with some idea of where to go from there.

Down to the bone, Keith knows that he's working with a bad idea. Without any better ideas, though, he doesn't see what he's got left, so he launches himself into the air and toward the mansion. A last glance at the well, as if Lance will appear there, miraculously blended into the crumbling stone, reveals nothing.

The first floor he breezes by; all of its windows are crystal clear save for the streaks of rain, and he sees nothing inside that means anything to him. The second floor, however, is worse. He swears on the shadows of candlelight that someone is in the long dining room, but there's no one, and looking into the other rooms, a haze of dust and cobwebs look back, blocking his view.

He flies desperately, searching for an ounce of movement, the slightest sign of life. The windows get grimier the longer he looks, and at the top, they're positively awful, clouded over almost as much as if they'd been frosted glass to begin with. One, however, draws him in anyway. There's a flash of red behind the pane, bright even in the gloom of the hall beyond, and it stalks his way with purpose. Keith sucks in a breath and swerves to plaster himself to the siding next to the window, tucked just out of sight; better to observe without being observed.

Ignoring the rain as it hammers down, he cranes his neck and peers through the glass, trying to puzzle together a form from the vague shapes on the other side. It's humanoid, that much he can tell, but unless it steps closer, out of the shadows at the end of the hall, he won't know much more. An idea comes to mind then. A bad idea.

So far, he's been a champion of bad ideas in this mansion. What's one more?

He manages to maneuver himself to rest on the narrow, shingled overhang above the window before drawing his bayard and smashing it through the glass. It shatters like a gunshot, even against the rumbling storm, and a breath after Keith has his weapon concealed again, someone pokes their head out the window, wearing a red helmet.

His helmet.

The helmet he gave to Lance in the courtyard.

And whoever is wearing the helmet is not wearing blue armor. They drip with red and white and flashes of black.

Curiosity gets the better of Keith, and he leans over to look through the window, white-knuckling the lip of the overhang before he falls. At first, there's nothing but rain-dappled carpet and scuffed wooden floors, but as he adjusts, something else moves into view. Someone else.

It's like looking into a reflection, down to the colors of his armor and the way he shifts his weight, except when Keith grits his teeth, his reflection just smiles.

Even through the dark visor, Keith can see that his reflection has exceptionally sharp teeth.


	8. The Captain

When Lance steps back into the hallway, he is no longer afraid. Mostly. If a ghost drifted out of the wall beside him, he'd still scream and make a break for it, but that suddenly seems a lot less likely, because haunted mansions don't have rooms that bleed coordinates all over their floors by the light of holographic suns.

Haunted mansions also do not have robot sentries like the ones lying in shambles on the hallway carpet.

Their familiarity gives him pause, and he kneels beside the torn framework of one, grabbing it by the chin to look it in the eye. One eye, devoid of life. Of electricity. Or whatever power source aliens in this sector of space prefer to use. But no matter what, the robot's empty husk means the mansion is coming apart before Lance's eyes, one seam at a time.

He isn't entirely sure just how he wants to proceed, knowing that. It would help to have Keith here, to bounce ideas off of him until they agree on something just shy of harebrained enough that literally anyone else would disapprove, especially since he has to explain the mansion anyway. Keith hasn't seen the navigation room. He can't possibly understand the truth of it all just yet.

But Keith isn't here, Lance hasn't got a clue where he is, and there are robots lying in shambles on the hallway floor, losing the appearance of armored knights and becoming much more like training bots with every passing moment. That, at least, gives him some confidence. They look like the same model of bots the Castle of Lions has, down to the lightweight staff each one carries, and if any more of them appear, Lance has spent enough time training to know exactly how to take them out (it involves shooting them in the knees first). It bolsters him, having that simple upper hand.

But he can't help but recall the last time bots attacked him outside of the training room, when King Alfor's AI threaded its way through the Castle. Even Allura was fooled into seeing Altea in place of an exploding star, because the AI gave her what she wanted to see. Lance supposes this mansion, this ship, is the same way, feeding off everything he and Keith believe about the haunted places of Earth and crafting the closest replica it can. They didn't see a ship when they arrived, because they didn't want to, and the ship knew it.

Picking his way around a couple more robot shells, Lance tries to steer his mind away from the idea. The mansion is a hostile enough place, and it doesn't need to know that he isn't overly fond of airlocks and cryopods anymore. But the thought persists, clinging to him with greater force every moment he tries to tamp it down, until finally, when one of the metallic carcasses seems to move, he has enough.

"Hey, Keith, come in, my guy." He's not expecting an answer, but chattering into the static of the comm gives him a chance to pretend that he's not on the verge of a very reasonable panic. "Big news from the second floor. This might rock the boat a little, but fun fact: we are not in a mansion, and it probably isn't even haunted! In fact, it's actually a ship, kind of like the Castle, which has also tried to kill us before. Which we handled, too. Like professionals."

Screaming and running away from the airlock that evening may have been less than professional, but a little white lie for confidence is in order. He doesn't push it, but instead focuses on telling Keith the rest. In the vain hopes that at least part of his message will go through, he shunts a fallen bot aside and enters a long dining room with fine china stacked high on the shelves. A bay window fills the opposite wall, giving him a good view of the relentless storm, and the static lessens just a fraction as he approaches, giving Keith the details all the while. How much of it gets through probably amounts to nothing, but it's worth a try, and it keeps his mind off all the terrible things that artificial intelligence can do to a ship.

Eventually, Lance runs out of things to say and the drive to keep trying. The static is endless, the storm still howls away, and even though dawn is probably coming, the Erasmian remains missing in action. Not much about the situation has ultimately changed, save for his new knowledge and the bots scattered on the floor.

It occurs to him that he hasn't heard any fighting since he left the navigation room. Not a peep. Perhaps that should be a good sign, but when he steps out of the dining room again, he realizes that he can't say for certain who brought the bots down. It's possible it was Keith, if Lance goes by the trail of destruction that pauses outside the dining room and resumes at the foot of the stairs, but it's also possible it was someone else. Something else.

He hates reminding himself of that damn shadow, but it's an issue that continues to grow more pressing the more time he wastes trying to puzzle it all out. "No more stalling," he mumbles as he descends the stairs. "Move fast, find everybody, don't get caught."

At least he doesn't feel too bad about leaving the second floor behind. Keith has probably combed it already, since that's where he started, so the first floor seems like a safer bet for meeting up again, and for finding the Erasmian. Besides, if Lance can make it back to the foyer, he can get his bearings and return to the tower that he made excuses against searching before. There's a nagging sense that he's missed something important there, and he's almost willing to bet that it might be home to the bridge. Where better to keep the controls of the ship than somewhere high above, far forward, where the captain can anticipate the dangers ahead?

And if that's true, Lance supposes it must also be true that most captains have a way of contacting their entire crew from the bridge. He just hopes that line of communication isn't blocked, too.

He doesn't get far enough to find out, though, because there are more ruined robots on this floor, one of which lies on the threshold of a grand ballroom. Inside, there are others, some missing their heads, others severed at the knees. Oddly, two of them are slumped against a splintered door, fists curled around their weapons and heads lying empty at their ankles. The room has the air of a graveyard, at once tempting and terrifying. Lance knows he should turn away, that he should keep moving until he reaches the bridge and finds a way to hail Keith. He _knows_ that these detours to investigate the little things never end well.

But tonight has been a night of poor decisions, and as he makes another, it's not entirely out of line.

He avoids the bodies of the robots, less afraid of their severed heads than their dead hands, which still clutch their weapons tight, and at the door, he gives the two shells blocking it a hefty kick each. They fall aside with a clatter, but do nothing else, not even twitch, as Lance tries to open the door. Despite the damage, it's still locked, and he reaches through the narrow gap to turn the knob from the other side, giving the nearest robot another kick to free up more space. With a harsh rattle, the door creaks open just a fraction, and he slips inside.

There isn't much to see at first. Lance doesn't know what to expect in such a small room, and the ship's illusion wavers as such, caught between the truth and a nebulous lie. Eventually, though, all pretense of deception melts away, because Lance can see all the cracks in the image, and he tears at them fiercely, rejecting anything but the truth with all the focus he can muster. Somehow, it's enough to overpower the ship, and the little room expands, the feeble cough of an engine spluttering up from beneath his feet. Massive displays line the walls, some pulsing with faint green lights and others dormant entirely, either with their screens smashed in or simply blank, not visibly damaged. The longer Lance studies them, the more useless they seem to be; there are no controls, no dials or buttons or bits and bobs that might serve some purpose. There are only monitors, wrapped around the walls save for in two places.

One such place is the door. The other is a vacuum cleaner, the kind that belongs in the back of a closet because it's thirty-two years old and spews more dust than it collects. Its red plastic body is dull with scratches and dust, and the see-through tank reveals a sad, ripped bag inside, all the vacuum's contents spilling out of the largest tear.

Lance blinks. He blinks hard. It remains a vacuum.

"Show yourself," he growls, lifting his bayard, searching for any break in the image. But it's as if the ship is strongest here, centered around one measly household appliance. When Lance looks at the vacuum dead-on again, he can feel his eyes slide away against his will, gliding over it as if doesn't exist except in his peripheral vision, as if it doesn't want to be found.

But if Lance can be more stubborn than an entire ship, he can certainly be more muleish than a vacuum on its last legs. With a huff, keeping his eyes trained anywhere but on the vacuum, he marches straight forward until his toes glance one of the clunky rubber wheels. Then he reaches down, grabs it by its handle, and gives it a vigorous shake. "I know you're not a vacuum," he says. "Spaceships don't have vacuums!"

He keeps forgetting that spaceships do, on the other hand, have a penchant for storing away people's entire lives, turning them into ghostly projections of their former selves, and when the vacuum bag expands, exhaling an ethereal blue mist as the vacuum turns into a skinny console, he yelps and leaps back, bayard at the ready. The mist doesn't follow him, though. Instead, it coalesces around the once-vacuum, adopting a hazy, humanoid shape, fuzzy with static at the edges and flickering in the center. It's like the last haunted hurrah of a VHS tape, churning out its tale one final time.

"I am Captain Epheia Meviras Tesar. You have hailed the _Prudence_. State your business." Tesar's voice warbles, as unsteady as her image, but the underlying iron in her tone remains.

Almost unconsciously, Lance squares his shoulders. "Uh," he begins. Tesar's image dissolves in a brief flurry of disapproving static. "I'm trying to find my partner. He's lost in your ship. With some kind of cryptid thing wandering around in it that probably wants to eat us. And your ship is pretending to be a mansion, which really isn't helping anyone. Could you do me a solid, turn that off?"

For a hologram with blurred features, Tesar gives off an overwhelming air of being offended. "The _Prudence_ ' _s_ defense systems are in place for a reason. Its crew must be kept safe. You are not crew."

"I know that, but this is an emergency. See, if you just shut down the whole mansion thing, I can find Keith, find the little fella we're trying to rescue, get out of your hair. Very easy to do, right?"

"Wrong." She flickers again, the color trickling from her image until the walls are bathed in a sickly grey light. "Part of my crew is still alive. My sensors have detected the use of Altean shape-shifting. I cannot endanger them."

"Altean?" Lance swallows past the lump in his throat. Guessing that the ship was like a malevolent hybrid of the Castle and a haunted mansion when he was on the run from the bots was maybe a little too on the nose. "You're Altean."

"I captain this ship under the commission of King Groggery the Infirm, ruler of Altea, long may he reign."

Well, that's bad news. Lance has missed most of the details along the way, but given how Coran talks about Groggery, it usually seems like the sickly king was long dead well before Coran was ever born. Not that Tesar needs to know that. Or should know that. It's difficult to gauge how wide a mean streak she has when her expression is muddled by waves of static, but angering her is definitely on a list of very inadvisable things. Diplomatic discussion is a better track, if Lance has learned anything from playing the charming second to Allura's calculated ambassador. Tesar has already made her position very clear, though. The mansion illusion is meant to hide and protect her crew, and she will not sacrifice their safety to a stranger.

The crew is probably dead, though. Allura and Coran needed cryogenic chambers to survive for ten thousand years, and the _Prudence_ predates them by far. Whatever traces of shapeshifting are unlikely to belong to a survivor.

Of course, that means something else is prowling the halls, changing its shape in such a way that Tesar's AI is fooled, and Lance gnaws on his lip. No matter how he spins it, it's bad news. Awful news.

Except for one thing, once he thinks a little harder.

"Let's compromise, then," he says. The smile that glides across his face would never fool anyone face to face, but he hasn't got the nerve for anything better, and hopes that it's enough to persuade ancient Tesar to trust him. He just needs a minute of her time, of her tech. "You don't have to bring the illusion down. But if you can sense someone still shape-shifting, can you point out non-Altean lifeforms? If you do that, you keep your crew safe, and–"

He doesn't get to finish before the room thunders and rattles, sending Tesar on the fritz and the monitors along the walls into a fit. Dust and sparks rain from the ceiling, and Lance stumbles back against the wall as the floor rumbles underfoot. What little light remains turns a ghastly shade of red, and the wreck of the door is even worse now, speared through by heavy iron beams and other debris. Knowing full well it won't budge, Lance throws his shoulder against it anyways.

In the background, Tesar barks orders, a sequence unintelligible even to the translator in his suit. Every time he slams into the door, she gets louder, and only when the monitors spring to life does he stand back to look at what's happening.

Most of the screens show fractured images, impossible to tease apart, but there are two with flashing red blips in a maze of pixelated white lines. "Are the dots supposed to be you and your crew?" he asks, hustling over to the screen and pointing. There's one dot paired with another in a narrow white block, and in the adjacent block, the same phenomenon is present. Another screen over, there is a third marker tucked into the corner of a tiny squarish block, all by itself.

"Yes," Tesar says, even as her console stutters and adds, "Berth One and Hangar One damaged. Berth One and Hangar One damaged."

"And the dots show everyone on this ship that's still alive?"

"Yes."

"Berth One and Hangar One damaged."

A kick to the console muffles Tesar's second voice, and Lance plants his hands on its edge. "Captain, something's happened to my partner and your crew. The door is blocked. You've got to drop this mansion so I can find a way out and help them."

"I do not take orders from you!" Tesar snarls, jabbing a holographic finger at his chest. A faint arc of electricity zips across his front. "My crew's safety comes first, not the demands of a boarder."

"I am not demand–okay, I'm demanding." He puts his hands up in placating gesture. "But I'm demanding because it sounds like your ship just crashed down on your crew's head, and I can help as long as I can get out of this room. Which I can't right now. Because it still looks a bit like that mansion unless I focus real hard, and I can't do that and save your crew at the same time. Need some extra brain power if I want to do that, see?"

For a tense heartbeat, Tesar looks like she's going to summon some kind of laser from the ceiling and promptly fry him with it, consequences be damned. Either a muscle in her cheek is jumping, or the hologram is unstable, but either way, the captain is incredibly displeased with the bargain Lance is trying to make.

Yet she agrees. Scowling, she turns to point to a screen that runs from floor to ceiling and says, "That will teleport you to the airlock. It is an emergency measure, and it will take the last of my reserves. If my crew is not safe by the time the solar cells collect a charge, I will put a bounty on your head. Understood?"

"No bounties, ma'am," Lance answers, scampering around the hologram to stand in front of the screen. The long crack running through the glass doesn't bring him very much comfort, especially since it zags through his reflection's throat, but he shuts his eyes and gives Tesar a thumbs up. "Fire away."

A high whine fills the room, and the teleporter screen glows with a sickly green light. In the distance, high overhead, something explodes as if it's been struck by lightning, and Tesar gasps. Then everything spins. Lance hears Keith's voice in his ear, breathless and panicked and completely unintelligible, and then his vision tunnels. It's like squeezing through a pinched toothpaste tube, and it seems like he'll be stuck in this limbo forever, if only for a moment.

Then the teleporter spits him out in the airlock, dumping him unceremoniously on his back. The chandelier swings once overhead, and when the last explosive pop comes from the rooftops, it vanishes completely, replaced by steely walls.

Lance staggers to his feet, and then he runs.


	9. A Change of Face

The floorboards are rotten, and not just on the third floor, but on the second, too. It's probably water damage, or maybe just poor construction. Regardless, they shatter in a spray of dust and splinters as Keith tackles his doppelganger, and together they fall some twenty-odd feet to the checkered tile floor below.

On the way down, two things occur to Keith in half-formed fragments. First is that whatever took the Erasmian is right here, pretending to be him, stealing his face. Second is that it has already pretended to be Lance, because it has Keith's helmet. It made him think Lance was injured, made him worry like hell.

Knowing that, he doesn't feel the least bit bad about using the creature to soften his landing.

They hit the floor, mixed in with debris from above, and the creature groans. Through the stars in his eyes, Keith sees it shift, sees his features and his armor flicker into something with shadowy flesh and sharpened fangs before the disguise slams back into place, the creature already gathering its wits. Then Keith has just enough time to hurl himself out of the way of a vicious kick to the ribs.

"Of course you can fall two stories and pick a fight," he wheezes. But so can he, and it gives him deep satisfaction to see the shifter's eyes widen when he slashes at it with his bayard. The flames are a nice touch, leaving a dramatic ghost of his swing behind.

Less nice is the sharp pain in his side. Maybe he actually can't fall two stories and starting throwing punches like nothing happened.

The shifter doesn't allow him to recoup any range. It has no secondary weapons, and instead slashes at him with fingers filed into claws, needle-sharp and gleaming. Keith knows his bayard could slice clear through it if he had enough room, but with the shifter pressing in at every opportunity, it's all he can do to just to block the blows that come his way, let alone return them. Worse still, the shifter toys with him. It's bad enough trying to look the shifter in the eye and stab it when it wears his appearance, but it makes changes to its size and shape in pursuit of the upper hand. When Keith gets his bayard free for a swing, it sheds a good foot of its height before rebounding upward once again, arms unnaturally long and grasping for his throat in order to tear him apart. No matter what he tries, the shifter forces him back onto defense, stretching his image as it pleases to claim an advantage.

He needs range. He doesn't have it.

He also needs focus, and he loses what little he has when the curtains on the walls melt away and the tile floor vanishes. The shifter drops its shoulder, entirely nonplussed by the sudden appearance of stark metal walls and battered hangar doors lying underneath the gaping hole in the ceiling, and it catches Keith in the gut with a guttural laugh, throwing him into the battered wreckage of an escape pod.

"Lance," Keith croaks, tottering to his feet and snatching his bayard before the shifter can get its hands on it. Even though his side is _this close_ to spontaneously combusting, it burns so badly, he hurls himself toward the exit. "Lance, it's not a mansion, it's a ship. There's a–"

The shifter's pursuit cuts him off. Keith flings himself up the steep metal stairs to the next floor just as it sinks its claws into his ankle to drag him down. It punctures the armor with the sheer strength of its grip, but as Keith slams down the steps, he drives his bayard toward its face with both hands, forcing it to let go or be rent in half. When it opts for the former, Keith manages to shout into the comm, "Meet me upstai–" before it recovers and snatches at him again, swatting him against the wall with a vicious backhand.

It isn't the blow that keeps Keith pinned to the wall so much as the too sly smile that runs from ear to ear on the shifter's borrowed face. "Lance?" it says in perfect imitation of Keith's voice. "I need you on the second floor. Hurry, please!"

It sounds so desperate. Hell, it sounds wounded even though it's barely taken a hit so far.

Keith fell for its imitation of Lance, and he hopes with everything he has that the comms are still trapped in endless static, or Lance will take the same bait, no questions asked.

His only consolation is that the shifter seems so pleased with the trap it's laid that it leaves itself open to a kick in the chest as Keith peels himself off the wall. He's definitely going to catch fire at this point, his blood roaring in his ears and his ribs screaming with the effort of running up the stairs, but his stubborn streak buys him just enough time to reach the second floor landing and hurtle into the next corridor. He reaches for the first door he sees, with its old-fashioned wheel lock, and to his relief, it's already open. After he squeezes through, he throws his shoulder against it until it clangs shut, then twists the inner wheel with all the strength he has left. The tumblers slide part of the way home, but as his vision adjusts to the low, cold light, Keith notices that the door frame is warped, probably with age. It cannot be bolted completely.

If he had a chair, maybe he could wedge it under the wheel, but he's locked himself into a long, narrow berth, and each bed is attached to the wall. There is nothing here but dusty mattresses and blankets eaten to holey scraps, plus a lone sign on the wall in script he cannot read. Tucked into a corner, there is also a shattered tube that looks like the ghost of a cryopod, its base welded seamlessly to the floor. Beyond that, there is nothing.

He can hear the creature in moments, clawing at the door, straining against the half-thrown bolts. Its shadow dances through the thin crack between door and jamb, sharp and bursting with energy. Whatever else the beast is, it's built to last. It will not die easily, whereas Keith would rather put his money on a snowball in hell than on himself right now. A single step outside that door will see him breathe his last.

So he sits. He remembers that patience yields focus, until he remembers that the creature has far more patience than he, so perhaps patience and focus are not on his side. Then again, what else has he got left? Either he sits and thinks of plan, or he does nothing at all, and he knows which option is guaranteed to leave him dead. He's not ready to die.

Sure enough, with a little patience and a lot of pretending that his side isn't battered to hell and back, Keith schemes. He could hide in one of the upper bunks and throw himself down on the shifter, killing it from above. He could roll beneath a bunk and wait for it to slink by, then cut its ankles. If he's quiet, he could stand beside the door and lop its head off when it comes in. The cramped room is suddenly bursting with potential, if only he can decide which option is the best, the most likely to succeed. The least likely to get him killed.

But there's not time. Even as Keith curls his fingers around a bunk ladder, the door's bolts give way, and the shifter bursts in and seizes him around the waist. It hurls him to the floor, snarling, and as he gasps for breath, it stomps on his wrist, forcing him to drop his bayard in reflex. Stars burst in his eyes as it lifts him up, only to slam him into the wall, and when he reaches out for his bayard, it catches him by the throat and squeezes, still wearing his face, still grinning with pointed teeth gleaming in the low light.

As he claws at the beast's hands, it occurs to him that if he dies here, Lance won't know until it's too late. The shifter could take his place seamlessly. It could fool Lance into leading it all the way back to the village. To the Castle of Lions. To Voltron. And then what? Who else dies?

But when the world tunnels into a narrow little point, Keith suddenly hits the floor, a gunshot ringing in his ears, blue-white lights flashing in his eyes long after the bullet has put a smoldering crater in the wall. Maybe it's too little too late, but Lance is here just in time.

Except Lance doesn't look happy to see Keith, and when Keith lurches to his feet, the muzzle of Lance's rifle swings toward him until he freezes. At this range, Lance doesn't even have to aim; he won't miss.


	10. 50-50 Shot

There have been a lot of surprising things in space. Plenty of them have been terrifying, too, scary enough to make Lance quake in his boots. But this? Watching Keith strangle another Keith, grunting and snarling and scrabbling for a better hold, straining for the discarded bayard between blows? He immediately wishes it wasn't real, because it's a nightmare and then some.

But he's seen the writing on the wall. He's deactivated the AI himself, freed the final traces of the _Prudence_ and probably sent Tesar off to the big ship in the sky at long last, albeit entirely by accident and possibly with a little lightning frying the solar cells. Whatever's happening before him is no illusion or trick of the mind, because the _Prudence_ no longer has the power to produce such a thing.

So he knows only that one Keith is his Keith, and the other is a fraud.

Damn it all, did he really sprint all the way from the airlock to the deserted ex-ballroom to here, just for this? Did he really throw himself through the wringer by using that teleporter, then beg his bioscanners to redirect him, only to find the actual worst case scenario waiting for him in this cramped berth?

He did. It shouldn't surprise him, either, given the way this all-nighter rescue has gone. So he does the only thing he can, and shoulders his rifle. Then, he fires.

The shot sails through the gap between the Keiths' faces, punching into the far wall and spraying debris. The Keith with the upper hand recoils, and the other Keith, blue in the face, topples forward, then stubbornly forces himself to his feet while clutching his throat.

Lance levels the gun at him until he freezes. "You're Keith One," he decides, trigger finger jumping until he moves it outside the guard. To the other, he says, "You're Keith Two.

"I'm not gonna play Twenty Questions," he goes on. "I know from at least four different movies that it does not work. Ever."

When he does continue, the Keiths look at him expectantly, waiting for the rest of his grand plan. Which he does not have. How was he supposed to prepare for this, after all? And how is he supposed to shoot Keith, even if he makes the right choice and shoots the fake Keith?

His knees wobble a little as he imagines making a mistake.

"Are you okay?" asks Keith Two, reaching out a hand, but he pulls away when Lance trains the gun on him.

"Don't," Lance growls. "Stay where you are."

God, he would give anything not to have to do this. Anything. One Keith looking at him with fear in his eyes would be hard enough, but two has put all of Lance's nerves on edge while tearing him apart at the exact same time. He can't hold a train of thought on track long enough to create a foolproof plan, not when his focus keeps jumping to the most catastrophic options available, and his trigger finger itches to make a choice.

Only one Keith is real, and the other must be the shape-shifting energy Tesar's systems picked up. That much is clear. But can the shifter read minds? Does it know all about Keith the same way it looks and sounds just like him?

Suddenly, Lance feels a spark of genius. It strikes like lightning, so brilliant that he nearly lowers his gun in his eagerness to say, "So, if we do the Voltron cheer, I say Vol, and you say…" Keith is the only person in the universe who refuses to finish the cheer properly. He has to be. It's a known law of the universe, a fixed constant, an eternally reliable fact.

And yet as Keith One croaks, "Voltron?" Keith Two echoes him barely a moment later.

"Damn it," Lance mutters. Already he can see his mistake. Tesar's ship dates back well before Voltron was ever created; Keith may answer the cheer wrong, but the shifter doesn't know what Voltron is anyway. Or it does read minds and knew exactly what to say, which Lance is inclined to believe, which he's afraid to test. There has to be another way.

He can't tell them apart visually. Their armor matches down to the last detail, save for scratches Lance doesn't have a hope of identifying as authentic. Keith's bayard is no help, either. It lies inert on the floor beyond the place where Keith Two was strangling Keith One when Lance arrived. Either one of them could have held it.

The only other difference is that Keith Two wears his helmet, and Keith One does not, but Lance hesitates to choose on only a single detail. After all, removing a helmet is easy enough to do. It could have changed hands. It could have stayed right where it belongs.

His own helmet feels too tight now. Way too tight. And warm. Maybe his discomfort shows, too, because as he opens his visor, Keith Two says that he doesn't look good. He garbles the words as if his throat hurts, and Lance hates to raise his bayard in warning against that.

But then he remembers Keith Two was doing the strangling, not being strangled. And that he didn't sound quite like that before, not at all.

With his heart thundering in his ears, Lance says, "I want both of you to look me in the eye and tell me that you're Keith, the real Keith. Go on, tell me the truth."

They do. They both swear that they're really, truly Keith. They swear it on their lives, all the color drained from their faces. They swear for all they're worth.

Lance fires.


	11. Smoking Gun

Keith faces death with his eyes shut tight.

He's already forgiven Lance; it's not his fault that the shifter is so clever, so careful. The odds of catching it in the act are slim to none, it's so prepared. In Lance's position, Keith would probably make a mistake, too, so he can't be mad about it, not too much.

His ears ring with the echo of Lance's shot, and his side flares as he sinks to the floor, knees too weak to keep him upright any longer. It's okay, he thinks again, because he also doesn't have the strength to be angry or even surprised, not even if he wanted to. He could lie here and die like this, probably.

Except suddenly someone has a hold of his shoulders, and Keith doesn't get to lie down to die, partly because Lance is holding him up, but mostly because he's not dying at all. "I was right!" Lance shouts, ruffling Keith's hair before yanking him into a hug. "I was right!"

"Sure hope so," Keith mumbles, peeling himself away to find Lance grinning just the tiniest bit sheepishly. "Wait, how sure were you?"

"Completely," Lance answers, almost cutting him off. Then he tips his head toward the body on the floor, which smokes gently with a yellow cloud drifting from its chest wound. "And that makes me double sure. No, triple sure."

The shifter never gave up Keith's appearance. It's surreal to see his own body splayed out on the floor, wheezing last gasps of sulphur, but he can't look away, because that could have been him. Well, probably not. But somehow he gets the sense that Lance was only mostly sure, not completely. Whatever tipped him off did the trick, and yet he keeps his eyes anywhere but on the body.

Eventually Keith reclaims his helmet from the shifter, and when he sees his own face twisted in pain and shock, it's time to go. He doesn't put the helmet back on as Lance slings an arm over his shoulders, and he doesn't look back except to pull the door shut on his not-body forever, stepping through the thin cloud of death-gasp-sulfur vacuumed out as it follows the draft.

Together, he and Lance trudge down the stairs, Lance doing most of the work since Keith's ribs and ankle could do with a couple days in a cryopod. To his surprise, and maybe a little relief, Lance has worked everything out. He explains how he stumbled on the AI of the captain, and how that led him to the shape-shifter just in time. "It works like the Castle," he says. "Worked. It disguised itself with exactly what we expected to see, and we wanted to see a haunted house in the middle of the woods in the middle of the storm. Easy."

Keith snorts. "I didn't want to see a haunted house."

"Well, we saw the same thing, right? So maybe you did. Maybe a little."

"Did not." He grins as Lance rolls his eyes.

"You had to. Come on, creepy storm, creepy creature? Mysterious kidnappings? You wanted something like this!" Then Lance gasps and jerks his arm back so fast that he hits Keith in the back of the head. "Kidnappings!" His fingers fly as he pulls up a menu on his gauntlet, and his visor flashes with blue diagrams.

For a moment, Keith doesn't understand the rush, but then he remembers the Erasmian they came here to find in the first place. "Do the scans work now?" he asks, grabbing onto Lance's shoulder.

"They're not great, but now that the ship isn't pretending to be a mansion anymore…" Lance punches the air a heartbeat later. "Got a ping downstairs!"

Keith's stomach drops. "You mean the basement."

Turns out it's hard not to imagine the ship as a haunted mansion, even with the illusion gone. As they creep around corners and shuffle down ladders into the depths of the ship, there's a persistent sense of _something_ still lurking. Lance swears there's nothing else to fear, since the bio scan only shows three dots, but Keith still looks over his shoulder after turning every corner, and he clutches his bayard so tight his hand aches. Better to be prepared. Always better.

Despite all his expectations that some new horror will leap out of the dark with pointed teeth and hungry eyes, Keith follows Lance all the way to the end of a narrow hall without incident. All the wheel-lock doors remain shut, and the blue lights glow softly, sapping away the last power remaining on board. Everything is as it should be in the belly of a shipwreck: still.

"Give me a hand?" Lance asks, breaking the silence and gesturing toward the far door. He gives the handle a wrench, but it hardly budges.

Keith tucks his helmet under one arm (it's reasonable not to want to wear it again, right?), and with the other hand, he pushes up on one of the spokes below. It stays fast for a moment, but when Lance puts his weight into pushing down on the other side, it finally gives way and spins the bolts out of the lock.

"Good thing we didn't split up again, huh?" Lance quips, nudging the door wide with his shoulder. "No more of that."

"Agreed," Keith mutters, stepping through after him. He can't promise it'll never happen again, but he's sure as hell going to make an effort not to fall into that trap in the future. Nothing good has come of divide and conquer tonight. He can admit that freely now that it's almost killed him.

Through the door, he stays close to Lance's side, allowing just enough room for Lance's bayard between them, and passing his own bayard to his outside hand. The room is dark and cool, with metal crates stacked to the ceiling and cargo nets strewn across the floor in tangled heaps. There are no lights save for a single bulb in the center of the room throwing weak light to the floor. More light seems to come from its reflection glimmering against the crates than from the bulb itself.

At least the cargo bay is small, though, and a single sweep reveals the Erasmian at long last. He lies unharmed in a corner, wedged between two towering containers with netting pulled up to his chin like a blanket as he sleeps. Only when Lance peels the netting away and tries to shake him awake by the shoulder does he stir, leaping from the edge of a coma straight to a frenzy, slashing out at Lance's face with ragged purple claws.

"Hey!" Lance falls back, bumping into Keith's knees. "We're not here to hurt you, man. Cool it!"

At first, the Erasmian says nothing, sizing them up with wary eyes and raised fists. But when Lance and Keith give him the space to crawl from his corner and dust himself off, he stops glowering at them long enough to ask, "Why are you here?"

"To rescue you," Keith answers. He wrinkles his nose; up close, the Erasmian smells like rotten eggs.

"Yeah. Don't we look like a rescue attempt?" Lance hops up and dusts himself off before pointing at the insignia on his chest. "We're the Paladins of Voltron. Well, two of them."

Recognition finally lights the Erasmian's eyes. "The ship castle!" He claps his hands together in delight, then points his forefingers at Lance. "You are the funny one."

"Hear that?" Lance wiggles his eyebrows at Keith. "The funny one."

"The princess's jester!"

A very undignified scoff escapes Lance, but as he scrambles for a reply, Keith waves him off and asks the Erasmian's name, which is Illus. And as it happens, Illus does not want to be rescued.

It's not that he didn't expect a rescue. It's that he doesn't want it. Finally assured he is among friends, he pulls his net over himself again and settles back down among the crates to await whatever is coming. Keith snatches the netting back almost immediately, but Illus's tiny claws are twined in the ropes, and he pulls them back with equal ferocity. Rescue efforts be damned, he does not want to go.

"I did not ask for your help, paladins," he growls.

"We saw you being dragged into a forest by your ankles," Keith snaps. "We're supposed to just ignore that?

"Yes. Because that is what happens here. Once every few years, the forest recreates us. It sings us to sleep and carries us away, and when we return, we are new. We are clean!" He picks at his palms with a scowl. "The forest is for the dead, and it sends us home when we are new again. Not before then, never.

"I will wait here, and you will go," he continues, glancing pointedly at the door. "It is my turn to become new." And no matter what they try, Illus will not be swayed. After all night chasing him down and nearly dying, he will not be uprooted, not for anything in the universe. Lance even asks about his family and friends, but Illus brushes the thought of them away. He is not the first to go missing, and he will not be the last. It is the cycle of Erasmian life, and it is to remain until the end of time.

Ultimately, Keith is the one to accept this first. "Leave it," he says, catching Lance's wrist in the middle of another hand-gesture-fueled burst. "He won't go."

"But–"

"But we spent all night for this? Yeah, we did." But they can't bend the universe to their will, and they can't keep fighting forever. Keith can feel the adrenaline turning to lead in his veins, dragging him down. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, he's going to keel over somewhere only mildly comfortable, and then he's going to sleep off the last few hours of hell so soundly that the universe ending couldn't wake him, not even if it tried.

"You don't have to stay," Lance says, making one last effort as Keith herds him to the door. Illus is already comfortable, though, and he looks perfectly content as they pull the door shut again, like it or not. Curled into the netting, it looks like he's settling down to nest, or maybe to hibernate. He looks anything but distressed as the door closes all the way.

The climb back up to the main deck takes ages. Keith makes Lance go first up all the ladders so he won't turn around and decide to haul Illus out of the cargo bay after all, and along the way, Lance hesitates constantly. It gnaws at him, the uncertainty that he did the right thing, and truth be told, it troubles Keith, too. He's just too exhausted to let the guilt take hold for very long.

In spite of their slowness, they reach the airlock ahead of dawn, and the rain drizzles down gently, mingling with the sound of the distress signal weakly escaping the ship, probably for the last time. The last of the clouds are thinning, and what little remains of the ship's solar panels glitters in the first traces of sunlight, scorched almost beyond recognition and strewn through the grass. Lance turns a piece over with his toe and mutters something that sounds like "Thanks, Captain," while Keith leans against the hull of the ship and breathes. It's peaceful, finally.

Except then their helmets beep with incoming transmissions all catching up at once, no longer held back by the thick metal walls of the ship. Keith fumbles to mute his helmet, while all the life drains from Lance's face. "We didn't tell them where we were," he says. "Oh man, Shiro's gonna kill us. And Allura. And Red. Probably not Blue or Hunk or Coran, and I can't speak for Pidge because that's impossible, but...Keith, we're toast."

Keith can't help it. He laughs. They always had at least a little hope of defeating the shifter and saving Illus, even in the darkest hours of the night, but sneaking back into the Castle with no one noticing? "We were toast as soon as we left," he says. "So let's go be toast before they bring the cavalry out to get us."

Lance worries his lip, listening to another incoming message, before shaking his head. "Let's go be toast," he agrees. "Hell, let's get some toast. Toast sounds pretty nice."


End file.
